Leading motor companies join with Shell to build high speed EV charging network across Europe
Sun 26 November 2017
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Royal Dutch Shell has announced that it will work with leading motor companies - including Ford, BMW, Daimler and VW - to build a fast-charging network for electric vehicles in ten European countries.
Shell says it will work with a charging network operator, called Ionity - which has its headquarters in Munich - to provide EV chargers at 80 of its biggest roadside filling stations. The Ionity group plans to establish 400 fast-charging stations across Europe by 2020. The project is the biggest to involve traditional carmakers, which have so far played a very limited role in fuelling cars they sell.
Shell last month agreed to buy NewMotion, Europe’s largest electric charging points operator with a network of 80,000 sites.
The points will use high-powered chargers which will be capable of topping-up an electric car in five to eight minutes — up to three times faster than is currently possible.
Each charging point will have a capacity of 350 kilowatts, compared with today’s industry standard of 50kW. Increasing the speed of charging and the distance that can be driven on a single charge are seen as critical to increasing the appeal of EVs.
Ionity will be in competition in terms of EV fast charging with Tesla which already has 361 “supercharger” stations in Europe, each with an average of seven charging points, according to a report in the Financial Times.
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